Red Star on the internet

Last weekend could be remembered as a historic moment for the internet.

For the first time, the US is no longer the country with the highest number of internet users, having been overtaken by China. As the ever-attentive Punto Informatico reports, citing various agencies, Chinese users have surpassed Americans by 220 million to 217 million.

But China's growth won't stop there. The increase compared to last year was 30%, and this appears to be the trend for this year as well. Given China's population and the fact that a large portion of Chinese are only now starting to earn enough to afford a home internet connection, it's likely that the gap will only widen and consolidate.

The fact that all this is happening despite the extremely high level of control and restriction implemented on the internet by the Chinese government is not a good indicator. Other governments might think that growth and control can coexist. In recent years, Western countries themselves have learned a lot from China in the area of control. For example, in Italy, not only sites involved in criminal offenses are blocked, but also those hosting certain online casinos and betting operators based abroad, to prevent Italians from escaping the state monopoly and the associated taxes.

The hope, of course, is that the exponential increase in the number of Internet users will make life increasingly difficult for regulators and that the internet phenomenon will translate into greater freedom of information in China as well.

Perhaps what we really need is a good jolly roger:

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